“That rules out things like sodium-24, which I thought of at first because it’s the classic radiological weapon—real strong radioactivity and chemically super active, so it would burn its way right into the body and would catch fire easily and be hard to put out. That’s why they store sodium in barrels, immersed in oil so it doesn’t spontaneously combust from the air around it. But the reason sodium-24 has been talked about as a fallout enhancer is because you make it by putting ordinary sodium in a strong neutron flux, like around a hydrogen bomb or in a nuclear reactor. Even if they made it in a reactor the day before they seized Air Force Two, and loaded it right on, it would be mostly gone now—and would have killed them in the early hours of the flight.
“The other family of radiological weapons is long-half-life stuff that isn’t very strong radioactively, and it could be on that plane—say tritinated methanol, methanol with superheavy hydrogen substituted for the ordinary hydrogen. If that burned it would put radioactive water into the air—but because it’s comparatively feeble, it’s purely a scare weapon, years or more likely decades before people would get sick from it, and you’d treat inhalation with lots of water and diuretics, it could be flushed out fast before it hurt most people. And on top of that, a long half-life means a small cross section of neutron absorption—”
Cam held his hands up in self-defense. “Whoa. I only got through one year of college physics.”
Browder closed in for the kill. “The cross-section for neutron absorption is closely related to how easy it is to make something radioactive. The weak stuff, that would last a long time and wouldn’t kill them while they flew here, is much more difficult and expensive to make than the strong stuff, which wouldn’t last all the way here and would already have killed them. So, the only things they could deliver on a flight that long are pretty mild and expensive and difficult to make. If it was any of the really bad kill-you-right-now stuff, it would already have killed them. If they are using the weak stuff, it’s mostly just a scare tactic, not something you really have to worry about; you need a good PR campaign, is all.”
Heather rolled her eyes; leave it to the science guy to think that all you had to do was explain things calmly and rationally, and everything would be fine.
Browder added, “But in case there’s something I didn’t think of, definitely warn the pilots not to fly through any plume of smoke after the crash, and if you can bring it down without blowing it all over, that might be extra safe. You probably don’t want the hero who saved us all to die of radiation poisoning next week.”
Cameron nodded infinitesimally. “Excellent. We’ll do that. Thank you, Dr. Browder, that’s what I needed.”
“Talk to you again soon, Jim.” Heather undocked her phone. When Cameron finished relaying Browder’s advice, she asked, “Wasn’t that really more of a question for someone at the Department of Energy? I mean, they’re the ones that build atom bombs and have all the physicists.”
“I wish,” Cameron said. “But there was no time—I’d’ve had to ask twenty of them and each one would have told me about one small detail. Your guy Browder used to be a science reporter, so he—”
“Fullback Fourteen will be on the target in thirty seconds,” Marshall said. “Going to feed from the Pentagon’s war room.”
The big screen wavered a moment and then they were looking southward across the mountainous desert through the cameras on the A-10. A tiny white bird shape just showed in a corner of the screen. The room was so quiet that they could hear the static in the link.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. THE DESERT BETWEEN SAN DIEGO AND ENGINEER SPRINGS. 5:57 P.M. PST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.
Greg Redmond didn’t have spare time or attention to be surprised when he heard, “Fullback Fourteen, you’ve got first shot.” His hands and feet mechanically did the necessary tasks as he listened. “Begin your attack immediately on sight. We have confirmed there are no civilian or military airliners anywhere in the vicinity. Investigative personnel have requested you bring it down with gunfire to preserve more evidence. Make one pass with the cannon, and if it’s still flying afterward, send both Sidewinders after it.”
“Roger.”
“We have also been warned that any plume, smoke, or flame from the plane should be considered extremely dangerous, and you are not to fly into it.”
“Roger. I have visual contact,” Redmond said.
Far below, Bad Dreamliner was coasting between two red-brown ridges spattered with deep green; in his head, Redmond was already solving the problem of coming in on it in a steep dive, figuring his pathway, and the old Hog was as familiar as his own body.
He banked, waited for his angle, and pushed the yoke forward to dive.
John Samuelson knew something was happening from the excited gabble. He’d been playing possum again, or just possibly he was actually dying because they had kicked his kidneys hard, over and over, and he might be hemorrhaging. Didn’t matter. He was awake with a chance to see it play out.
He flung himself hard sideways, rolling onto his back, and opened his eyes. Two of his captors jumped at him. He screamed into his gag, and cocked his feet to kick at them.
A row of fist-sized holes appeared in the bulkhead above him.
We won. We did it. He had been so afraid this was the beginning of the dive onto the target.
But the home team had pulled this one out.
The two men approaching Samuelson fell backward, and he seemed to be weightless. The plane was flipping—perhaps it had lost a wing?
Samuelson looked down to see a gushing stump instead of his foot. No matter, he had no more walking to do, anyway. He left the deck and felt as if he were flying, still trying to shout, “We won!” through the gag.
When he hit the forward bulkhead, the pain in the back of his head was nauseating, and his neck felt all wrong. Maybe that was just disorientation from the spinning plane? He wasn’t sure where his tormentors had gone. He saw only carpet, a bolthead, and someone’s cell phone sliding around.
He shut his eyes and tried to take a deep breath. He couldn’t feel whether his lungs responded or not, so he just prayed. God, please take care of things from here on out. Please accept me, forgive all my foolishness and pride, and make sure Kim knows I loved her.
He gave up trying to breathe, and tried to smile, because he’d handed it off to higher authority, and it was all taken care of, but somehow his face wouldn’t—
Shock, heat, darkness.
ABOUT THREE MINUTES LATER. WASHINGTON. DC. 9:02 P.M. EST. MONDAY. OCTOBER 28.
The image on the big screen was live from a camera on an A-10 flying figure-8s upwind of the wreckage. Air Force Two had shed a wing and rolled when the Warthog’s big nose cannon, designed to pierce Russian tanks, had perforated a diagonal line across its body, down the wing root, and back across one engine. The 787 Dreamliner had corkscrewed against the mountainside like a missed football pass, breaking into a cloud of parts and flame as it bounced uphill. The long streak of blazing metal was now setting fire to the autumn-dry brush; ammunition and fuel cooking off made more bursts and explosions.
But there were also a half dozen hot yellow-white fires, as bright as flares, pouring dense white-gray smoke into the air. The heat of their burning punched wavery updrafts through the red flame and black smoke pouring out of the wreckage. As they watched, another one erupted, first with a burst of orange fire and black smoke, but almost instantly becoming another yellow-white flare pouring out the gray-white smoke.